While the terms and conditions for Apple's new "Developer Transition Kit" forbid developers from running benchmarks on the modified Mac mini with an A12Z chip, it appears that results are beginning to surface anyhow.
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Image Credit: Radek Pietruszewski
Geekbench results uploaded so far suggest that the A12Z-based Mac mini has average single-core and multi-core scores of 811 and 2,781 respectively. Keep in mind that Geekbench is running through Apple's translation layer Rosetta 2, so an impact on performance is to be expected. Apple also appears to be slightly underclocking the A12Z chip in the Mac mini to 2.4GHz versus nearly 2.5GHz in the latest iPad Pro models.
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It's also worth noting that Rosetta 2 appears to only use the A12Z chip's four "performance" cores and not its four "efficiency" cores.
By comparison, iPad Pro models with the A12Z chip have average single-core and multi-core scores of 1,118 and 4,625 respectively. This is native performance, of course, based on Arm architecture.
Top Rated Comments
1) down-clocked slower than iPad Pro!Apple needs to do better than this for desk top performance. I am a little scared now.
2) Running benchmark in rosetta
3) Only using 4 out of 8 cores for some reason
4) not the chip that will be used in macs
These benchmarks mean absolutely nothing.
Apple needs to do better than this for desk top performance. I am a little scared now.
This is a development tool to aid in software transition, NOT A PRODUCTION UNTI!Really underwhelming results
Why? It's only a developer tool that's not representative of what their real chips will be capable of plus it's going through Rosetta. This is exactly why they didn't show benchmarks at WWDC and why they don't want people running them on these things.I am a little scared now.